Austria’s election winner will be tough on migrants.
This Sunday’s vote looks likely to be very closely contested between the conservative governing People's Party and the far-right opposition Freedom Party
#Austria #AustriaElection
This Sunday’s vote looks likely to be very closely contested between the conservative governing People's Party and the far-right opposition Freedom Party
#Austria #AustriaElection
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NewsTranscript
00:00Gang violence and stabbings have dominated Austria's tabloid headlines in recent months,
00:05with the most prominent incidents taking place in Vienna's migrant neighborhood Favoriten.
00:10I went to the station there, and three or four boys came to me with a knife,
00:17but that was before three months or something, and they asked me for money.
00:21That was the reason why I moved away from this area, because more and more crimes are happening.
00:28Then I have a problem. Then I am a foreigner in the mainland.
00:32For the first time since 1945, a far-right party is leading the polls ahead of Austrian elections.
00:38The Freedom Party has been campaigning against immigration since the 1990s.
00:44The currently governing Conservative People's Party,
00:47which is just two percentage points behind the Freedom Party in polls,
00:51is also campaigning against illegal migration, calling for less welfare and more deportations.
00:58Meanwhile, the number of refugees has been declining,
01:01with 50% less asylum applications so far this year compared to the same period in 2023.
01:08It is not just migration Austrians are worried about.
01:11The country's future members of parliament, working here on Vienna's Ringstrasse,
01:16will also need to turn around a situation that sees Austria slipping down the world's competitiveness rankings
01:23and finding itself in its longest recession since the Second World War.
01:27We are in a recession since the end of 2022, especially in the manufacturing and construction sectors.
01:34This is also a consequence of the downturn in Germany.
01:39So Austria is strongly connected to the German economy,
01:42and right-wing populist parties are gaining from this discomfort.
01:50Last but not least, climate-related events have played a big role in campaigning.
01:54Last week, catastrophic floods killed five Austrians and damaged thousands of homes, streets and railway tracks.
02:01Johannes Bleschberger, CGTN, Vienna.